People of all ages love to chew gum. Since the late 1980's the trend has been heavily toward sugar free chewing gum. Whether it's to avoid sugar for dental health reasons, or for weight control reasons, sugar free gum has become more and more popular over the past two decades.

As people include sugar free gum in their daily routines, it is worth taking a look at what is used to sweeten sugar free or "Sugar less gum". While many people assume that simply by avoiding sugar they are making a healthy decision, there is more to the story and it's worth understanding.

If sugar free gum is part of you or your family's routine, you may want to take a hard look at the ingredients and ask yourself if you want to be ingesting them on a regular basis. When a company manufactures sugar free chewing gum, they have to replace the sugar with an alternate sweetener. Almost always, companies select one of a few artificial sweeteners. The reason is fairly simple. These artificial sweeteners make sugar free gum sweet, low in calories, and inexpensive to produce.

However, sugar free gum, and other sugar free products have been the source of much debate recently as health conscious consumers worldwide question the safety of artificial sweeteners. Sugar free gum almost always contains Aspartame. Aspartame is one of a number of artificial sweeteners that is used in Diet or sugar free products. However, many don't know that Aspartame is linked to over 91 different side effects and is the most commonly complained about ingredient to the FDA each and every year.